…el blog de andrew…

Our passage was found on page 158.  We classified its themes under “God” and “Meaning of life”.

(1) ”What the priest saw at last was that the lesson of a life can never be its own.  Only the witness has power to take its measure.  It is lived for the other only…There is another who will hear what you never spoke…”

Lessons through others

From this we concluded that McCarthy is telling us that we can learn from others, but certain deeper lessons can only be learned by observation of others and their experiences.  The priest finally learned from the other that which he could not learn or see clearly on his own.  Because of this he says that the witness is able to draw upon the lesson of the other and learn from it.  “There is another who will hear what you never spoke” is referring to the lesson/actions of the other.  Although never directly spoken, one is still able to take some sort of lesson or idea away from the experience of the other and utilize it as a learning tool.  Billy learned from the wolf and even from the journey itself although there was no verbal communication.  This is a very literal example but can also be linked to this quote.

(2) “To God every man is a heretic.  The heretic’s first act is to name his brother.  So that he may step free of him…”

Rejection of nature/God’s world

We applied the idea of the heretic (which can be defined as a misbeliever) to man in general in the novel.  Man thinks himself apart from God.  He names God and man to distinguish himself.  He separates himself from the natural order/old order which is mentioned when talking about the wolves earlier in Part I.  By trying to tame the wilderness and land and everything and by naming it he is rejecting it and setting himself apart.  So not only did we see it in a religious light but also as a metaphor for man and his desire to spread out and modernize and domesticate the world.  As if the world God created was not good enough, his desire to take control of it and diminish the old order/nature aspect of can be viewed as him rejecting it.

(3) “Stones themselves are made of air…”

Spirit and Body

We took this little portion and connected it with a couple of other quotes from Part I.  The first being Texan joke (39) ending in “You aint got nothin left but buckles and boots.”  The second being (45) “Lo que se tiene en la trampa no es mas que dientes y forro.”  The third being (46) “The wolf is like the copo de nieve.”  The page 39 and 45 quotes we related to each other and determined they were trying to tell us that everything on the earth, each being, has 2 parts: a spirit and a physical body.  And the spirit is the part that knows the world.  We compared the page 46 “copo de nieve” quote with the “stones themselves are made of air” mentioning that a snowflake will disappear once held and air cannot even be held, it is invisible and unable to own, just as the wolf.  Both are unable to capture as is the spirit.  But although one cannot capture it that does not mean it does not exist.  Then we linked the religious segment on page 158 (“In the end we shall all of us be only what we have made of God.  For nothing is real save his grace.”) with the spirit idea, deciding that the priest is telling us that God is related to our spirit and without him in us we are just a void, an empty body.

As a side note, there is a program for graduating students to go to various parts of Spain and be a “North American Language and Culture Assistant”.  I am not sure about all of the information but the deadline is May 11th.  What I do know is that it is for 8 months, you are given a monthly salary which is about 800 dollars US, and you only teach 12 hours per week.  It would be a good opportunity if any of you want to check it out.  Here are the links.

http://span4313.blogspot.com/2007/02/dear-friends-education-office-of.html 

http://www.mec.es/sgci/usa/en/programs/us_assistants/default.shtml

…The first page of The Crossing is a mythical beginning about the demarcation and definition of the U.S. in a space that is, by definition, multicultural… This statement fits the first paragraph very well, noting that is is mythical (defined as based on or told of in traditional stories; lacking factual basis or historical validity).  It is told by the narrator but we can obviously see the multiculturality in it.  The young county is named in Spanish (Hidalgo) and it is mentioned that they “named him features of the landscape and birds and animals in both spanish and english” when referring to the boy.  The inclusion of both languages which is something common in this border area (NM) definitely is a hint at the multiculturality.  Also, the relationship with nature noted in the quote above is something that lets us know that some of the culture from Mexico is included in the territory which happens to be in the U.S.   

The Mexicans are portrayed as a simple group of people place a special importance on their traditions and culture.  The elders in the book have a somewhat negative view of them in certain passages (“Aint no guarantee that a one of em can read.” 51) and (“She come up from Mexico.” “I dont doubt it.  Ever other damn thing does.” 60).  This is odd because the land had fairly recently switched hands from Mexico to the U.S. and that someone would think that the Mexicans are already encroaching on their land seems kind of ridiculous.  As far as when Mexicans appear with Billy on his way to Mexico, they are very pleasant with him, sharing food, helping tend to the wound of the wolf, among other things.  When he gets further into Mexico and is robbed of his wolf the portrayl of them goes sour, as they are seen as taking advantage of him until finally he lets them know he was serious by killing the wolf.  I think the representation is fairly even meaning that it does not stereotpye or generalize them.  Various situations show various aspects of the Mexicans.  Especially when taken side by side with the portrayls of the people from the United States, who are also not always represented as superior.